Portland’s often-envied big sister tried building its way out of its affordability crisis, with dismal results; now it decides to “follow the money”

“We had ramped up our rental housing supply, [and] focused on supportive housing for our most vulnerable population,” Robertson told NextCity.org. “But the pressure in the real estate market continued to escalate dramatically.”

In fact, a recent analysis showed that over 12,000 of Vancouver’s units were sitting empty — the result of a wave of real estate speculation and commodification.

The result, he says, was “untethered speculation, jacked-up prices and flipping in the local real estate market.” A warning to Portland?

So the administration went after the economic root of the problem, by passing a 1% tax on vacant homes. The administration believes the new tax will dampen the impact of housing speculation, and also provide funding to help build more affordable housing. Properties that are not being held for speculative purposes (such as historic homes seeking rehab) have a number of ways of claiming exemption from the tax.

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One Reply to “Vancouver implements “empty homes tax” to dampen speculative appreciation of home prices”

A point of clarification- The 12,000 units were over a period from 2001 to 2016. Not, new apartment units built to solve an affordable housing crisis. The homes in the study were a high proportion of second homes that had been identified as not having been rented for 30 consecutive days or 6 months. The marker for the proposed Tax.
Indeed a small number were vacant homes built with foreign money from unstable parts of the world. Vancouver has very low property tax, while having high taxes in other arenas.

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Welcome! This forum presents an alternate perspective on the current challenges facing the city of Portland, Oregon. What effective solutions are available? What is the actual evidence that they will work, or not? How can these lessons be applied in Portland? We will pass along regular entries on timely issues from other parts of the world, comparing notes on our challenges here. We will also offer our own commentaries and those of Portland-area colleagues.

Portland is rightly regarded as an important global model of urbanism and of urban successes. Portland started with the advantage of small blocks, facilitating walkability; the Urban Growth Boundary was created in the 1970s, about the same time a freeway along the waterfront was replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park; Portlanders’ love of their natural setting ensured tree-lined streets and efforts to protect views of snow-capped Mt. Hood; a proposed multi-story garage in the city center became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984, thanks to community effort, and many other squares and parks have followed; a streetcar system and light rail were started, which gradually helped to generate suburban neighborhood centers, improving walkability; a compact mixed-use neighborhood began to replace the old industrial area of the Pearl District, initially at a good human scale; and early development of bike lanes positioned Portland as a leading US city for bicycle planning.

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